


Empty Spaces

by InsaneTrollLogic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s06e21 Let It Bleed, Memory Alteration, POV Female Character, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 14:53:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1351519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a hole in Lisa's mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to LJ 6/24/2011

There's a hole in your mind that doesn't go away. It's the nagging that claws at your consciousness, the inexplicable feeling that there should be someone different in the corner of your eyes. You're three states away from home when you're discharged. That doesn't seem at all strange to you, but there's a little piece, barely audible, that demands to know,  _Why this isn't strange? Why you were there?_

Everything in the house feels just a little bit skewed, like someone snuck in and moved every single object a centimeter to the left. You spend almost an hour staring at the picture of your family, wondering what possessed the photographer to frame it like that, with a gaping white space where, aesthetically, there should be a person. 

There's a shotgun in your pantry, fully loaded, and a distressing amount of rock salt. The gun feels natural against your fingers and one weekend you take a two hour drive to a target shooting range, put the gun in Ben's hands, and sit in awe as the clay targets shatter. 

Ben's smiling when he gets in the car, and you remember your best friend in high school, killed by a stray bullet in a 7-11 robbery. You wonder when guns became okay in your household.

The strangest things start to catch your eyes, and before you realize it, you're saving clips of strange crimes from the local paper, squinting through the grain of the photos, searching for a black behemoth of a car.

You wish you knew why it feels so important. 

"Why haven't you dated anyone lately?" Ben asks, swirling the Trix around in his cereal bowl. His milk has been dyed red and when you blink you think the shade has darkened to the crimson color of blood.

"Mom?"

"I guess I just haven't found the right guy."

"You used to go out with people all the time."

"Do you want me to start dating again?"

"No," Ben replies quickly. "It's you and me against the monsters, right? We don't need anyone else."

It's  _monsters_  that catch your attention now. They leer out from movie posters, and flash in a stranger's eyes. When you do your crossword in front of the television at night, you find yourself doodling strange symbols in the margins. They're for protection, though you can't say how you know.

The three weeks you take to recover from your car accident go by too quickly. Ben heads to and from school on his bicycle rather than the bus, because according to him, the bus driver gives him the creeps, but most strangers give Ben the creeps now. 

You wonder when your son became such a loner. He was never like this before you moved.

You wonder why you moved.

The first day back at the Yoga studio is the first time you feel like your feet are under you. The women in your class are all loose and smiling, and the man teaching the self-defense class afterwards lets you audit without charge. While yoga still feels fun, self-defense feels serious. Feels like life or death. You're scarily good at it. 

When you get home, Ben has dumped a line of salt on every windowsill. You wonder if you should take him to a psychiatrist but you know they would never understand.

And there's a conviction deep inside you that says if Ben's a psych case, so are you.

The wrongness starts to seep out through the edges of your life, or maybe you just get used to it. When you run across one of your friends from your old neighborhood, you feel almost normal until she asks, "Whatever happened to that man of yours?"

You blink. "It's been a while since I had a man."

"No, I could have sworn. Dave or something. Nice fellow. A bit sad and a little abrasive, but my god, the  _ass_ on that man."

"I think you must be thinking someone else."

She frowns. "Yeah, I guess so. Too bad too, if I remember right, the guy was just your type."

Back at the house, it's two beers before you stop shaking. Ben's on the couch, watching an episode of Doctor Who on BBC America. "I don't think you could ever just erase someone from your mind," he says. "Because it wouldn't just be you would it? How many other people would you have to change? You could never get them all."

It should just be inane chatter about a science fiction import you couldn't care less about, but it sticks in your mind and haunts your dreams until Ben's nightmare shoots you into consciousness. He's screaming at the top of his lungs about vampires, which is strange because between Twilight and Buffy, this is not a generation that fears the vampire. 

You dash to his bedroom in a panic that greatly exceeds the situation. Ben wakes up, limbs thrashing, grasping for the drawer at his bedside table where a massive switchblade sits gleaming in the moonlight.

He doesn't calm down but the flailing attack ends with his arms thrown around your neck as he buries his face in your shoulder. His tears are hot and stick against your skin, and he's sobbing, "Dad, dad."

Which you think is massively strange until you realize he's actually saying  _Dean_.

You feel that emptiness again, the one you can't explain. 


End file.
